Determined to prove a villain.

Every newly released Nixon tape reminds us afresh how special he was. But this one has extra bonus Reagan approval of Nixon’s attempt to evade justice!

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

Nine months later, after Nixon precipitated the resignations of two top Justice Department officials and forced the firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair, Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he heartily approved.

Reagan told the White House that the action — which would become known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” — was “probably the best thing that ever happened — none of them belong where they were,” according to a Nixon aide’s notes of the private conversation.

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I read the clip when you did. And the miscegenation stuff is shocking (not really in 1973). What is revelatory is the “it breaks the family” quote. This is why several generations of Republican presidents who didn’t practice abstinence in their youth, checked the “pro-life” box. If we break the link between the patriarchy and choice, the issue will go away. As a father I don’t want my daughter to marry some punk just because she had to bear his kid. That’s an argument that works in AK.

Mr. Graham complained that Jewish-American leaders had denounced efforts to promote evangelical Christianity, like Campus Crusade, and Nixon and Graham agreed that the Jewish leaders risked bringing anti-Jewish sentiment to the surface.

“What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up,” Nixon said. At another point he said, “It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”

I normally don’t use boldface, but on rare occasions it just seems necessary.

Nine months later, after Nixon precipitated the resignations of two top Justice Department officials and forced the firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair, Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he heartily approved.

This sentence is so poorly written, it makes it seem like Ronald Reagan was Archibald Cox.

Good point, wren. But when I saw that Nixon comment on the bi-racial love-child, I was a bit perplexed. What’s he mean? Seems plausible that, for a guy of his age and generation (which was my fathers), the worst tragedy that could befall a person was to be a bi-racial child. The second would be to give birth to one (recall that Doris Day brouhaha?). So I imagine it may very well have behind it a sentiment not at all dissimilar to pro-choice arguments we’re all familiar with–and many of us hold: spare the child a tragic life; empower the woman to avoid wrecking her life if she wishes. So, the reason he possibly sees this as an un-wantable pregnancy (the bi-racial aspect) doesn’t resonate very fully with us, but his solution is entirely of a piece with the dominant feeling in these here circles about how to deal with it. Yes?

The sentence eric and Kieran quote appears to have been turned into two sentences, at least on the version I’m currently viewing (from the link in the post):

Nine months later, Nixon forced the firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair, Archibald Cox, and prompted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus. The next day, Ronald Reagan, who was then governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he approved.

Sort of an odd analogy there, eric, but ok. Ya gotta admit there was at least something there to, you know, work with. “Now Dick, don’t you see, it’s the same if there was an Asian and a white? Or a Mexican and a white? And what if the mother was carrying a recessive gene of nattering, naboby negativity? What if she was afraid the kid might become a hippie? Or a journalist?”

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
…
It is fitting that Richard Nixon’s final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. “It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard,” said one. “And it fucks up my children’s sense of values.”